RE: The Worst

jordie chambers (jordiekc@rocketmail.com)
Thu, 03 Jun 1999 18:27:20 -0700 (PDT) 

 
> Jordie rants about A Boy in France:

I rant therefore I am?

> "The letter from the parent is such an obvious emotional
tactic
> that it turned me off completely, I didn't trust the
author. 
> It's like a politician screaming about the children of the
> loggers in hopes of saving the forest industry and showing
> pictures of them crying, hijinx, weapons and plastic
> flowers.  Makes me bitter and cold and inspires me to
> write something real."
> 
> Real??? I suppose your idea of real is _Reservoir Dogs_. 

Well, yes, that's one example.  I hope you're not
insinuating that swear words and violence is my idea of a
story that reads like it's uncontrived, even though it is.
 
> A Boy in France was simply a slice of life of a soldier
in France during
> WWII. I suspect that such soldiers often did, in fact,
get letters from
> home, and said letters did have emotional impact on
their recipients given
> the dangerous, messy circumstances. 

These were dangerous, messy circumstances, and J.D.
avoided them like a tightrope walker wearing two by fours
for shoes and ten safety harnesses.  I can gauarantee that
J.D. wanted to take that story elsewhere, had probably
typed forty pages and cut it down to five.  War has killed
and conceived thousands of literary masterpieces, For Whom
the Bell Tolls, War and Peace, Winter Gruel...I could go
on and on.  For Salinger to take a surface scratch of a
'slice of war', is insulting - he chews emotion like
bubble gum.  When he got it stuck in his hair, and tried
to pull it out, he backed into the corner of ancient
didacticism.  Cheap - never mind everything else, let's
look at a boy in France, we won't look at him closely, we
won't let you into his world, but we will attempt to make
you sorry for him.

For J.D. to describe the pestilence of the trenches and to
link that flavor of war to that with a soggy old letter is
a cheap tactic.  For me, if a story is going to move me,
the author has to dig a little deeper.  As a war story,
it's pitiful.  It's difficult to write a short story about
war, but it's been done beautifully by Hemingway,
Lawrence, Renoir among others.  I am not ranting for
ranting's sake, J.D. insulted the face of art with an
attempted tear-jerking flicker of reality.

> While we're on the topic of emotional tactics, I am so
bored with this "look
> at me I'm real because I'm a bitter and cold cynic and
you can't pull the
> wool over my eyes" posturing that has become so popular
these days. This has
> been done ad nauseum. This is the fucking mantra of the
1990's! Nevermind
> real, how about writing something original?
> 

Cynics will be around ad infinitum, you'd better get used
to them.  I'm hardly ranting, by the way, and compared to
some of the people you might be talking about, if you're
eyes aren't rolled, I'm a fucking lamb.   

> Never mind REAL, how about ORIGINAL?  Is that actually
what you mean to say?

Jord the frothy mouthed jackal
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